Add titles, labels, gridlines and other chart elements

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You can add chart elements (axes, titles, data labels, error bars, gridlines, legend, trendlines, etc.) quickly by clicking the Adjust Chart Element on the Chart Design tab and clicking one of the buttons for different options. Additional choices may appear to the right, indicated by an arrow.

- [Voiceover] We're looking at the filechapter three chart design tab.Anytime you click a chart contextual tabs appearin the ribbon menu system.Chart Design is available with lots of choices.The leftmost button Add Chart Elements has lots of choices.Now, these are going to be covered in chapter fourof this course, but I do want to alert you to the now.Because these are the elements that we often work withas we work with Excel charts.And many, many times you'll want to make changesto the charts to adjust either the axes, as we see here.

Now that may not be an obvious term for some people,but both axes represented in this blue chart to the right:Primary Horizontal, Primary Vertical.If we don't understand this or we're not quite surewhat this means, we might choose More Axis Options.We now see over on the right-hand side, a seriesof choices here with different icons for morefine tuning detail.Now, for some people, this is way too deep,but on the other hand there will be times, I think,for almost anybody using Excel charts, you mightwant to explore some of these.

Fill in a different color, something like that,or rearrange the data in a different way.You can close this at any time.You can also click and drag here, make it floatif you wish.That's just one example.I'll close it here.So the idea is at different times you might want to changethis part of a chart or another part.With the chart selected we're going to Add Chart Element.We can see some other choices here.Maybewe want some grid lines here.We've already got grid lines in that blue chart,but just the major ones.We want minor ones.

We're gonna make that chart bigger, as I'm doing right now.I'm gonna drag from the corner, make it bigger.Maybe the minor grid lines are helpful here.You can imagine debating that possibly at times,but still you have these options available.Many, many choices here under Add Chart Element.Some of them could be greyed out as some of them are here.We just can't use those options, for example,on a column chart.But we've got some other choices.And for every one of these, too, as we slide acrossthe different choices, there's always an optionat the bottom for More.

For example More Trend Line Options.We see some choices off to the rightbased on these examples here, and possiblywe'll see some other data off to the rightby way of those dialog boxes as we saw earlier with axes.And we can close that down if we no longer need to use them.So these are features you want to explore.You don't necessarily have to go to a lot of these.And as we'll see with certain other features in Excel,some of these we won't have to do much adjustingto at all.Because other features in Excel cover some of these.

But it is good to know that these are here,and you will use them from time to time.If I switch the focus here by first of allshrinking this chart back to approximately is prior size,and then click the line chart.Now as I go to this Add Chart Element button,remember again that's the left-most buttonon the chart design tab, we now see choices for lines.Maybe we want to coose drop lines.I don't think that would be a good choice here,here's what they look like.But that's the stuff from a later movie in this course.Other choices here called UpDown Bars and so on.

So these are the elements of chartsthat we sometimes work with.Some are more important than others.At different times you'll change your mindabout what's more important.Lots of features here available.This is on the Chart Design tab, the left-most buttoncalled Add Chart Element.And by the way, think of that not as adding a chart element,but, you know, changing a chart element as well.Lots of capability, lots of options availablefrom this icon.

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Author

Released

7/25/2016

Charts allow you to communicate information visually, with greater impact than tables or raw data. They also happen to be one of the most powerful and easy-to-use features in Microsoft Excel for Mac. Let Dennis Taylor show you how to create different kinds of Excel charts, from column, bar, and line charts to doughnuts and scatter charts, and decide which type works best for your data. Learn how to fine-tune your chart's colors and style; add titles, labels, and legends; insert shapes and pictures; and pull data from multiple sources. Along the way, Dennis offers shortcuts and tips for being more productive and efficient.